Jose Mourinho insisted on Friday he will not give up pursuing Wayne Rooney until the English Premier League transfer window finally closes.
The Chelsea manager has made it clear he wants to recruit Rooney but has failed twice to persuade Manchester United to part with the England striker.
And while Mourinho avoided referring specifically to his ongoing pursuit of Rooney during a news conference on Friday at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground, he confirmed ahead of his side’s opening Premier League game with Hull City he will not abandon efforts to land his No.1 target.
Mourinho has also been linked to a reunion with Samuel Eto’o who appears destined to leave Anzhi Makhachkala and has spoken positively about his desire to work with his former Inter Milan coach again.
But Mourinho indicated his priority was elsewhere.
“For me as a manager, I’m happy that a player who worked with me before goes publicly and says he’d like to join me again,” said Mourinho – in his second spell in charge of Chelsea.
“Especially a player like Samuel, a player with a big history in European football.
“But we are trying to get one player (Rooney) and we’ll see what happens. Before the transfer window closes, we’ll make decisions. The decisions can be different decisions.
“We (managers) all say ‘no’ but we lie to the last day, when the market is open, because we’re all waiting for something to happen.
“Even if we say we’re very happy with our squad, we lie because we always want to make it better.
“We’ll see what happens, not just with us but with Manchester United.”
While Mourinho expects to add to his squad, he was adamant David Luiz will not be leaving despite interest from Barcelona.
“This club did fantastic work and found a fantastic balance,” explained Mourinho. “The club is in a perfect condition to say ‘we don’t want to sell this player or that player. We want to keep this one’.
“David is one of the players the club made a huge investment in.”